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Hello, i am new to Linux Mint and Dual Booting so this is just a very basic question. What i would like to do is keep windows xp on the computer but also use Linux Mint manly as my home server to save files to. If i were to do this, would i be able to access my files even when windows xp is running, or would i need to use linux mint to retreve my files? I have a seperate hard drive just for the server and obviously want to be able to use it whenever the computer is turned on. Any advice or comments would be greatly appreciated.

normally if you have to exchange files betweeen XP & Linux, the conventional way is to have a filesystem which is common for both (r/w by both) like FAT32. But now things are changing. Mint can read NTFS & there are programs for XP that can read ext3 filesystem. So its up to you... whether you want 3 partitions with one having XP the other Linux & the third common for both to share files (FAT32) OR with 2 partitions one for XP having ext2 IFS for reading ext3 FS & of course mint can read XP NTFS.

Don't fix it if it ain't broken, don't break it if you can't fix it -Husse